Rocket League is one of my favorite games. I originally received it as a free PlayStation Plus game, but I loved it so much that I picked it up on the PC as well. When the Nintendo Switch version was announced, I already knew I wanted it. Not only was it a portable version of Rocket League, they were also bringing exclusive Mario and Metroid themed cars to the game. To me, that was just the icing on the already delicious cake.

When the game was finally released, I immediately wanted to unlock the exclusive cars and show them off online. Playing as a Mario or Metroid car isn’t as impressive to other Nintendo Switch players, but I figured it would be pretty cool for other players to see on other platforms, such as Xbox and PC. Imagine being on the pc and seeing a Metroid gunship zoom by for an amazing goal or seeing a Mario vehicle on the field, making the trademark “jump” sound?

It made me curious though. I have cross-platform play enabled on my pc and my Switch, but I never have encountered anyone using the Samus or Mario vehicles while I was playing on the PC. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because there are thousands of vehicle customizations in the game. I was curious about what the cars looked like when playing on the pc though. Would the enhanced visuals of the pc version make the cars look prettier? There was only one way to find out, so I set up a private cross-platform match.

Once I configured the private match and connected the Nintendo Switch version to the PC version, I drove the cars close together to take a look. To my surprise, the Metroid car wasn’t a Metroid car at all. It just looked like a default, standard vehicle. I’ve been playing the Switch version for a while now, and this entire time I was thinking people were checking out my sweet ride, when in reality they were probably wondering why I was driving such a boring vehicle with no decorations on it whatsoever.

Since there isn’t any cross-chat in the game, except for the canned phrases, there was no way to get any feedback from other players about your car, so I just had to assume that they could see my car. That obviously wasn’t the case at all, and it makes me feel a little bummed out now. What’s the point of having a cool looking car in the game if no one else can appreciate it but other Switch players? Isn’t the whole point to all of the crate and car dlc to feel good about the custom car you are using?

I’m hoping that this is a bug, but I am thinking that the developers might have done this on purpose to cut corners. Maybe they didn’t want to spend the time to add the models to the other platform versions, because they felt it was a waste of time. Or maybe the actual content is trademarked to the point where you can’t even look at other players enjoying it from a different platform. It makes me wonder if this could be patched in a future update, but if they have some sort of legal reason as to why they can’t, then that’s just a huge bummer. I guess that ultimately means I am going to be less tempted to use these cars, since no one else will be able to appreciate them except for other Switch players.

This is a trivial thing for the most part, but it makes me wonder how many people out there are driving around in their Metroid gunships and Mario vehicles, thinking that everyone can see them just fine. Or maybe some people bought the Switch version because they mainly wanted these vehicles? Some people are bigger fans than others, so you can’t really rule anything out. What do you think of all of this? Would you like to see this issue resolved or do you think it’s not a big deal? Let me know in the comments!